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Still on Marxism, Groucho did, like his homonym, cast a critical eye on the weaknesses of our system. His at first sight strange statements were, on further consideration, profound, iconoclastic and eminently sensible. Take, for example, the following two: ‘I would never belong to a club that would have me as a member’ and the brilliant: ‘I do have my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others’. Groucho’s genius was in satire, and with these axioms he was taking the proverbial sledgehammer to some of the big social issues already apparent in his time, which plague us today. The emergence of tribes (political, racial, social) and their danger to collective society, hence the refusal of clubs which, by their nature, by including the likeminded, exclude others. And the lack of principles shown by many in private and, even worse, public life. The latter is particularly apt to ridicule current political leaders, who govern by opinion poll, rather than political and ideological agenda...

Few terms have suffered as much misuse as Marxism. This thought came to my mind during a conversation with a friend a few days ago, in which, after Marxism was mentioned, the question followed: which one? Groucho’s or Karl’s? The question is more apt than you may think at first. Most people believe Marxism is a doctrine which incites the working classes to revolt and recommends the elimination of private property and equal (not equitable) distribution of resources amongst all. This is not the case. Marxism does not in fact make any recommendations. It analyses capitalism from the perspective of Hegelian dialectics and concludes that the opposing forces and interests driving the system will destroy it. This prediction does not request or require action from any social class. Karl’s extremely competent analysis of the inherent contradictions in capitalism have been interpreted and exploited by many, Lenin the first one that turned analysis into recipe, but Marx only observed and analysed...

  Capitalism as described by Adam Smith, its ideological father, is based on the accumulation of capital, which keeps the system operating. The capitalist (in modern terms, the entrepreneur, as for Smith the capitalists were the factory owners) accumulates wealth to reinvest it in additional means of production, growing his capacity and as a result his competitiveness. This in turn increases general wealth, as more competitive production means cheaper consumer goods. Alas, the XXI century is very different to the XVIII. A large proportion of global wealth today is unproductive, tucked away in tax havens and invested in obscure assets, not engaged in tax paying, employment creation or productivity increase. This robs the population of the benefit of accumulation, without benefitting the accumulator, who has nothing to show for it other than an inflated bank balance. Our system needs to find a new way to employ accumulated capital in the productive delivery of society’s objectives Le...

  Economics, or political economy, as the discipline was called then, became a pseudoscience in the late XVIII century, through the contributions of people like Smith and Ricardo. At the time, a critical simplification was made in order to model mathematically the behaviour of the system. Humans will act always to maximise their own self-interest, or utility. This is plainly not true. We are moral animals (at least some of us) capable of acting for the benefit of others over our own, but introducing this degree of freedom would make the modelling of inputs, processes and outputs necessary to be a science impossible. This simplification has become ingrained in the economic theories which actually inform the design of the actual system we live in. As a result, the system is better suited to those who best fit the oversimplification, sociopaths who always and unconditionally prioritise their own interest. We see the consequence in the success of Johnson, Trump, Putin, Koch, etc. Lengt...